Information Technology Services (ITS) started seeing an increase in reports of email messages being received in Washburn mail accounts with the following text:

This sender failed our fraud detection checks and may not be who they appear to be. Learn about spoofing (link to Microsoft site about spoofing).

The message typically goes directly to the Junk folder on the Office 365 Washburn email account. We believe the cause of this happening is that the sender is sending the message from another source (Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.) and setting their From address as their Washburn address. We are tracking this and will update if we discover additional information.

If you have your mail forwarded to another email address, we would suggest that when responding to those forwarded messages that the From address of the respective mail service is used. When setting the From address to your washburn.edu email address and sending from Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc., this will cause the text above to display the notice to the recipient as listed above.

The change in seeing the new notice on messages sent in this manner is a change from Microsoft. It is not something we in ITS can control.

Any questions or concerns, please contact ITS User Services at 785-670-3000 or send email to support@washburn.edu.

I wanted to take a moment to remind everyone that ITS will never ask for your account information especially your password. If you are ever unsure about an email message, feel free to forward it to support@washburn.edu or call us at 785-670-3000. A message asking you to update your account information is spam.

By marking messages as junk (or blocking sender), this trains the email system to treat similar messages as junk in the future sending those directly to the Junk Email folder. This is true not only for your mailbox, but it helps others on campus also to send those messages to the junk folder campus wide.

A message that is obviously spam that is in your junk folder does not need to be forwarded to ITS. The message was flagged appropriately and went to the junk folder for the entire campus.

The past few weeks, we have seen an increase in spam. If the message is already in the junk folder, the message can be deleted or the junk folder emptied.

Marking a Message as Junk

A message that is in your inbox and that is spam, the best next step is for you to mark it as junk or block the sender. This can be done in Outlook Web and Outlook desktop clients. There are a few different methods to mark a message as spam, but for this post, we will keep the process short.

Locate the message in your message index.

Right click on the message.

Select

Outlook Web: Mark as Junk

PC Outlook: Junk > Block Sender

Outlook for Mac: Junk > Mark as Junk

The above will move the message to the Junk folder and train the email system to block those in the future.

If you are ever unsure about a message and whether it is junk, please feel free to forward it to support@washburn.edu.

Clutter and Messages in Clutter Folder

As a reminder, Clutter was enabled by Microsoft summer 2015. It is not something that we can turn off globally, but did want to remind you how you can turn it off if so desired. Please refer to the blog post from August 2015 (Microsoft Clutter Showing up on Washburn Email Accounts) to disable (or enable) Clutter. Note that messages that are moved to the Clutter folder are considered inbox messages. Thus, if a message is in the Clutter folder that is junk email, the same steps should be used to classify it as spam and no need to notify ITS support about the message.

Questions

We are here to help with any questions. We want you to be safe in doing your job. If there are any questions about messages, links, etc., please do not hesitate to contact us in ITS User Services. Our phone number is 785-670-3000 and email is support@washburn.edu.

Microsoft Office 365 has been rolling out a new feature called “Clutter.” This feature in Office 365 is designed to help you focus on the most important messages in your inbox by moving lower priority messages out of your way and into a new Clutter folder. Clutter uses machine learning and user interactions to determine which email messages to filter and move from the inbox into the Clutter folder. Essentially, the system evaluates which messages you read and which ones are ignored and learns which messages to move to the Clutter folder.

By default, Clutter is not enabled. You must enable it via the Options in your Outlook Web settings. If you would like to learn more about this feature and how to enable it, please see this page, http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=506974.

We’ve become aware that Microsoft has started sending notifications to users alerting them to this new feature. These are legitimate messages from Microsoft and will look similar to the following. The links in these messages will take you to legitimate Microsoft Web sites. You are not required to enable this feature and can safely ignore the message from Microsoft if you wish.

Below is an example of a message that is sent through by Microsoft about the new Clutter clean up.

Clutter places these items into their own folder, helping you focus on your most important messages. If Clutter gets it wrong, you can move messages and conversations back into the inbox, and vice versa. And Clutter will learn from its mistakes. If you have questions, go here.

Say hello to a cleaner inbox.

This system notification isn’t an email message and you can’t reply to it.

Thanks to Eileen for writing up this message as we start to see the campus reporting the notices.

Information Technology Services has finished migrating to Office 365. All ITS staff are now using Office 365 for our email and calendar. All of our student workers are using the new Office 365 as well. We are happy to report that everything is working great!

As we prepare to migrate those individuals that volunteered to be early adopters, we are working on documentation as well as the schedule for migrating all of campus. We have the web site (http://www.washburn.edu/a-z-index/its/email-calendar) where we will be posting documentation, migration schedule, pre-migration, and post migration steps. We will also be announcing drop in sessions for question and answer one-on-one sessions.

Delete any unneeded mail – Delete any email you do not need to keep. This will help your migration go faster.

Trash Folder — Empty your trash and keep it empty. The trash, deleted, and deleted items folders will not be migrated to the new system. If you need assistance checking your Trash folder settings to make sure that messages are being purged, please contact 785-670-3000 or email support@washburn.edu. If you are using the Trash folder as a “staging area” for email prioritization, you will need to come up with a different folder to use for that purpose.

Large messages/attachments — Large messages greater than 25 MB may not easily migrate to the new system, so be sure to download any attachments you need to keep. Thunderbird will allow you to search for messages by size. MyWashburn webmail will allow messages to be displayed by size which can help locating large files. Please contact support@washburn.edu or call 785-670-3000 if you need assistance.

Save any .exe attachments — The new email system will not accept email attachments with executable files (even if they are zipped), so be sure to save any .exe files before your migration.

Please watch the web site and email announcements for additional information. Any questions or concerns, please contact ITS User Services at 785-670-3000 or via email support@washburn.edu.

We started receiving reports of phishing attempts. The first few reports came in on Saturday and Sunday the number has tripled. The message has been the same in all of the reports and below is an example of the message. Note, this was not sent out by Washburn ITS. We will never send out such a message or ask for your password. If you responded to this message, please change your password immediately to a new password you have not used previously.

Your Incident ID is: 130329-018715
This is an automated message to notify you that we detected a login attempt with a valid password to your Washburn! account from an unrecognized device on Sunday, June 14th, 2013 12:26 AM BST.
Location: Czech Republic IP=89.187.142.93
Was this you? If so, you can disregard the rest of this email. If this wasn’t you kindly follow this link http://mywashburnportal.webs.com/ to review your Washburn account
Sincerely,
The Washburn! Helpdesk

We are working to block this message from arriving on campus. If you have any questions, please contact us at 785-670-3000 or send email to support@washburn.edu.